Emitte spiritum tuum et creabuntur, et renovabis faciem terrae. Thou shalt send forth thy spirit, and they shall be created: and thou shalt renew the face of the earth. [1]
On this glorious feast of Pentecost the Holy Church makes repeated use of a verse from Psalm 103, one that is full of mystery. We find it in the Alleluia verse and throughout the Divine office: “Thou shalt send forth thy spirit, and they shall be created: and thou shalt renew the face of the earth.” In the Latin version we use habitually the meaning is rather more dynamic: “Send forth thy Spirit, and they shall be created.” It is an appeal.
As we know from the book of Genesis, at the very beginning of time, when God created the Heaven and the earth, the spirit or “breath” of God was already there:
In the beginning God created heaven, and earth. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters.[2]
During the course of history, spanning the entire time of the Old Testament recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, continuing under the New and Everlasting Covenant of Christ, and up until the present day, this Spirit of God has been ever present, filling the judges of old with power to combat the enemies of Israel, animating the kings of Israel, inspiring the prophets of old, continuing the work of material creation in the beginning, with the new creation of man as a son of God. But the supreme moment in this history of the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, when something even greater was created and truly the face of the earth was renewed as never before.
This time it was not the visible heavens and earth that were created, but spiritual heaven and earth which is the Church. Gathered around the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Apostles, Disciples, and holy women received from on high the gift that the Lord had promised them. This time the Spirit of God moved, not over the waters, but over the new humanity, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. From that Upper Room where all had gathered and where the tongues of fire descended on each one, the Church moved out to renew the face of the entire earth, the face of the whole world. Inspired by God’s own breath, His Spirit, these Apostles, made bold by the grace of God, would not be stopped until the Gospel was preached to every creature, as the subsequent history of the Church has proved. This is the apostolic action of the Church, founded on the ardent prayer of those same Apostles, and especially of the Blessed Virgin, Mother of the Church. As Cardinal Charles Journet, the great theologian of the Church, writes:
It was [Mary] who lifted up the newborn Church by the power of her contemplation and of her love. She was of even more use to the Church than were the Apostles who acted outwardly. She was the hidden root in which was secreted the sap that was to burst into flower and fruit.[3]
In our day too, there is the same mandate to preach the Gospel everywhere and to all. The latest phase of this proclamation is sometimes called the “New Evangelization,” since there is a true need to re-evangelize those countries, especially in Western Europe, where the Faith was once so strong, but has now grown weak. In our day too evangelization is lifted up by the power of contemplative prayer, which is why there is a need for contemplative monasteries, both of men and of women.
In the early days of the first evangelization, it was the pagan gods who did everything possible to impede the work of preaching. As Saint Augustine shows in his masterpiece, The City of God, these demons desperately clung to the oppression they exercised over human beings. They inspired the various civil authorities with the hatred of Christianity, unleashing the various persecutions. But to no avail.
During the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius (A.D. 14–37), the news of the great god Pan’s death came to one Thamus, a sailor on his way to Italy by way of the island of Paxi. A divine voice hailed him across the salt water, “Thamus, are you there? When you reach Palodes, take care to proclaim that the great god Pan is dead.” Which Thamus did, and the news was greeted from shore with groans and laments. Of this Chesterton once said, “It is said truly in a sense that Pan died because Christ was born. It is almost as true in another sense that men knew that Christ was born because Pan was already dead. A void was made by the vanishing world of the whole mythology of mankind, which would have asphyxiated like a vacuum if it had not been filled with theology.”
In our day it is a more insidious and sophisticated paganism that seeks to blot out the truth of the Gospel by instilling in men’s minds the mirage of an earthly happiness, while promoting the culture of death that denies every true aspect of marriage, the family, and life itself. The new Pan is called “Gender theory.” We must be ready to be martyrs of truth, purity, and sanity, in a world gone mad with empty dreams. But this new Pan will die too. It is all part of the plan of the Father.
May Our Lady, Queen of the Apostles and Spouse of the Holy Spirit, obtain for us an abundance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit so that we may continue, each in his or her own way, the great work of spreading the true Gospel of Jesus. Thus, a new world, the Kingdom of Heaven, will continue to be created and the face of the earth will be renewed in spite of any persecution that may visit the earth. Amen. Alleluia.
[1] Ps. 103: 30 (Douay –Reims).[2] Gen. 1:1-2.[3] The Church of the Incarnate Word, tome 1, Chapter IX, n. 8.
